Smart Phone Keyboards Seem Dumb to People of Their Type

When the iPhone first came out, Richard Kasperowski wanted one. But there was a problem. The keypad on the phone’s touch screen uses the traditional keyboard configuration, called “qwerty.”

“I thought it would hurt my brain using a qwerty,” says the 39-year-old technology director in Cambridge, Mass. He wanted something different. He wanted a Dvorak.

The Dvorak keyboard layout, though around for decades, is as little-known among the general typing population as it is passionately embraced by its devotees. It is to the keyboard what Esperanto is to language and Betamax to videotape. Fans say it lets them type at blazing fast speeds, with less strain on their hands and wrists than typing on a conventional keyboard.

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